Holy smokes we’re on a roll, 3 trips in less than a week! As a last-minute thought; Friday afternoon, we decided that Saturday morning we were going to splash the boat at the Squalicum Harbor ramp in Bellingham and fish lings again. After a 3:00 am departure and a quick stop for a little ethanol free go-juice we were dockside and ready for a run to the islands. Our plan was to hit a number of reefs around Orcas Island until we had our two ling limit, then explore our way back to the ramp.

After an uneventful but mostly dark cruise, and a beautiful sunrise we were at our first stop. Shortly after we dropped our gear we hooked a sub-legal ling but with the wind the spot was difficult to maintain the correct drift so we moved on. Throughout the course of the morning we probably hit 12-15 different reefs. The wind was very unpredictable and made it difficult to set up on many of my first choice spots.

We kept at it; working each area with large root beer colored curly-tail jigs on 3 ounce jig heads for our ling a ding a ling party. After weeding though many fish out of the slot limit we had the party wrapped up by 11:00 or so. We had a blast, each fish fighting like a junkyard bulldog being startled out of it’s nap.

It was a great morning in the Juans and we were very glad that we decided to chase lings again. His and her’s lings are an excellent way to start the weekend! A couple trip notes:

1) It was also the shrimp opener and even arriving at the ramp very early we had to get creative with our parking.

2) All or our fish were caught in 60-70’ of water.

3) With the shifting wind and current I had to run the kicker in reverse to maintain the correct drift.

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